Home of legendary legumes

Vince Di Benedetto and his wife Tina stand Saturday in their Kearney Lake backyard, which is home to a variety of plants such as peach trees, tomatoes, and figs. Some of their scarlet runner beans are about 6.5 metres tall. (CHRISTIAN LAFORCE / Staff)

The oohs and aahs begin even before the central attraction comes into view.

The garden, tucked away on a side street off Kearney Lake Road in Bedford, is crowded with peach, pear, apple, hazelnut, apricot and even fig trees. Grapes, currants and blueberries line the edge of the backyard, and in the middle is an enormous garden plot filled with every vegetable imaginable.

It’s practically a farm, really.

Asked how many tomato plants she has, Tina Di Benedetto answers, “Over a hundred, for sure.”

“No, it’s more,” argues her husband, Vince.

“Well, I said ‘over’,” she retorts.

They settle on 120 or 130.

“Look at this guy,” says Tina, pointing to one outstanding veggie specimen.

“Fagioli della regina,” she pronounces proudly. The queen’s beans.

These beans are certainly worthy of their regal moniker.

Towering over Tina and Vince, who stand about five-foot-two and five-foot-four respectively, the scarlet runner beans are about

6.5 metres tall. The vines curl around and around the poles and branches that stretch into the sky.

“If you unroll that, it’s 50 feet,” says Vince.

The Di Benedettos say their scarlet runner beans have grown tall before, but not quite this tall. Usually, the couple builds a teepee-like structure of beanpoles, and the beans climb up to the top before cascading back down. This year, Vince decided to put them to the test to see just how high they could get.

“I want to see how tall they gonna grow this year,” he says. “If that one start to roll down, then what I gotta do? If I find a longer stake, I try again.”

The beans have already nearly reached the top of the seven-metre poles, and the growing season isn’t even over yet.

Most scarlet runner beans usually grow to around two or three metres.

Once the beans are mature, the Di Benedettos will harvest and dry them and cook them in soups on their woodstove.

This is the lifestyle they’re used to. The couple grew up in a town called Pratola Peligna in Abruzzo, Italy, where they had plenty of livestock and grew fruit and vegetables.

“We learn from our parents and kind of take it with you,” Tina says. “We did just about everything to survive. We were self-sufficient.”

The couple, who made their living in a construction business and Tim Hortons franchise, have a bit more time on their hands after entering full retirement this year.

The Di Benedettos don’t mind sharing their age: she is 73, he is 77.

“So they know what an old guy can do!” Vince says.

The Di Benedettos also have seven hens and a rooster that are well protected from the mink that like to sneak into their pond and eat the fish.

Vince collects a few eggs from the henhouse and points out one that’s the size of a duck egg — likely a double-yolker.

“Poor chicken!” says Tina. “I guess what they do is they rest one day, the next day you get twice the size.”

The large garden isn’t without its troubles, though. Electric fencing is needed to keep the deer from raiding the vegetable bed.

And Vince has been battling a porcupine that has taken a liking to nibbling on the branches in his pear tree. He has rigged up a lightbulb on a stick nearby so he can keep watch on the tree at night.

“They can chew that thing to death,” he says. “I thought it was a deer, but when they reach up to the top, I said, the deer doesn’t have extension ladder to go up.”